


when we were young

by firefeufuego



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Cassian joins the Partisans instead of the Rebellion, Childhood Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Rebelcaptain Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22029082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefeufuego/pseuds/firefeufuego
Summary: Jyn and Cassian grow up together as Partisans but don't stop pining after each other until Scarif
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, Jyn Erso & Saw Gerrera
Comments: 10
Kudos: 52





	when we were young

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wintersend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintersend/gifts).



> Dear wintersend, I loved your prompt ('the ultimate obliviousness is when they're both saying I love you to each other and they both mean it romantically but both interpret it as platonic') and I promise it will feature heavily later in this story but it kind of got away from me and so here's a few thousand words of setup and them being sweet to each other as kids. Merry Christmas!!
> 
> Just a note on ages, I decided to change both Jyn and Cassian's ages because I wanted the age gap to be smaller when the romance kicks off during their teenage years. So, this chapter is set in 15 BBY and Jyn is 8 while Cassian is 10.

Jyn doesn’t sleep on the ship taking her away from her home. Instead, she sits silently in the co-pilot’s seat next to Saw. Earlier in the flight he had tried to come up with comforting words that could stand up against the horror of what had just happened to her but he had quickly given up and left Jyn to watch the streaks of stars and planets rushing past. She has no idea how long it takes them to get to whichever planet Saw’s taking them, no idea what she’ll do once they get there. All she knows is that Mama trusted Saw like a brother and that he is the only thing she has left.

They land on a beach with stark white sand and crystal clear water, a world away from Lah’mu. Saw leads her into a squat, metal building that looks at least as old as she is and from the numerous scorch marks covering the outside, has witnessed pain and death of its own.

Sentients of all different species nod respectfully to Saw as they pass and she notices that his face has become hard and fierce, his shoulders more rigid. This is not her Uncle Saw who sometimes came to play with her, here he is someone respected and feared. Jyn thinks the man in white wouldn’t have dared to show his ugly little smile if he’d been standing in front of this Saw.

They arrive in front of a door and she can tell Saw wants to have another try at comforting her. He opens his mouth to speak before closing it again and sighing. Instead, he just places a hand on her shoulder and shakes his head. Then he turns back into a solider, his voice brisk. ‘This is where you’ll sleep, Jyn. You’ll be sharing with a few other kids - hope that’s alright.’

Jyn nods, just as she’s nodded to everything Saw has said since she climbed out of the bunker.

In fact, she has no idea whether or not it will be alright because she can’t remember ever meeting another child before. The only person she saw on Lah’mu other than her parents was the old man who ran the next farm over.

Saw opens the door to reveal a large room with six bunks lining the walls. He clears his throat and the five young sentients in the room stop talking and snap to attention. ‘Everybody, this is Jyn. She’s one of us now.’ He opens his mouth to continue then pauses, looking down at Jyn with the same sad expression he had on the ship. ‘Be careful with her.’ He squeezes her shoulder again, nods and then leaves the room.

Jyn wants to run after him, tell him that she just wants to stay with him but he disappears around the corner before she can. He must have somewhere important to be. Everyone in her life seems to have important places to be these days and none of them are ever with her.

She takes in the group in front of her. All of them seem older than her and she tries to straighten up so she won’t seem like such a baby in comparison.

One of them, a Togruta girl, says, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard Saw Gerrera say ‘be careful’ before. Who are you to him?’

Jyn swallows and tries not to sound nervous. ‘My ma- my mother was Saw’s friend.’ She focuses hard on a crack in the opposite wall to stop herself picturing mama’s body falling to the ground.

The other girl nods and looks at the others with a raised eyebrow. ‘That explains that.’ She sprawls back across the bed. ‘You’re an orphan too then, I guess. Welcome to the club.’

Jyn’s lip wobbles and she has to grit her teeth hard to stop from crying.

She must not manage it because another girl speaks up, ‘Cera, stop being such a dick.’ She gestures to the spare bunk in the corner. ‘Here, Jyn. That one’s yours. I’m Maia, this is Tula, Codo, and Cassian.’

The others nod as they’re introduced and Jyn mutters hello to each. Tula, who looks so identical to Cera that they must be sisters, murmurs, ‘Welcome’, and Codo makes a joking complaint about being even more outnumbered by girls. The last one, Cassian, stays silent. He looks the nearest to Jyn’s age but he seems much older. His eyes are full of a sad understanding that makes Jyn want to cry again.

Instead, she goes over to her new bed and sits on it with her back facing the others. She wishes desperately that she were alone and even more desperately that she would just wake up to find herself back in her own bed with her parents laughing and talking in the next room. To distract herself, she opens her backpack and starts to unpack her things onto the shelf built into the wall next to her bed.

After her clothes, shoes and datapad, her fingers brush the soft, familiar fabric of her toys. Eager to have a piece of home in this strange place, she rushes to unpack Koodie and Starrie and Sniksnak, lining them up next to each other. She didn’t have time to pack all her toys and as she looks into her now empty bag, she realises that she must have lost Stormie when she was running. Maybe that’s for the best though, because Stormie looked too much like the tall men in black who spoke like machines and shot her mama.

She strokes the different coloured stitches on Koodie’s back from when she had a hole in her and Papa had to fix it. Jyn had watched the ‘surgery’ very closely to make sure her tooka-cat was alright and Papa had kissed the top of her head and told her she was a good friend and that he was proud of her.

Someone snickers and she turns to find Cera and Codo watching her. As she looks around the room, she sees that none of the others have any toys on their shelves - Cera even has a blaster on hers.

 _Of course they don’t have toys, because they’re not_ babies _._

She looks back at her toys, her _friends_ , with an aching heart. As she starts to put Koodie back in her bag, a voice comes from just behind her. ‘What’s its name?’ It’s the only voice she hasn’t heard yet, which means it must belong to the last boy, Cassian.

She mumbles, ‘Koodie’, and hunches her shoulders, ready for him to tease her about the name she chose when she was four. ‘I know it’s silly.’

‘No, that’s a good name. I used to have one that was just called “Cat”.’

She gives him a tremulous smile as she turns to face him. ‘That is a pretty dumb name.’

He returns her smile and he suddenly looks just as much like a child as her. ‘I know.’

‘Did you lose your one?’

His smile fades and he nods. As he meets her eyes, she sees her sorrow and pain reflected back.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me too.’

They sit in silence for a moment before Jyn takes her second stuffed tooka-cat off the shelf and offers it to him. ‘You can have Starrie if you want. You can even rename him.’

Cassian solemnly accepts the doll, handling it like it’s precious. ‘Thank you.’ He takes it over to his bunk by the door and pointedly places it so it has pride of place on his shelf.

Cera rolls her eyes again but she does mutter an apology to Jyn.

Clutching Koodie to her chest, Jyn lies down and imagines herself back into the world she lived in 48 hours ago.

* * *

She wakes up to the silent dark, heart racing and mind full of nightmarish memories of a red flash, the smell of burning and the awful thud of her mother’s lifeless body. Suddenly she’s back in the cave again, unsure whether Saw really came for her or if she only dreamed he did. Are the men in black still looking for her? She reaches around her lantern but it’s not where she remembers leaving it. Instead she finds Koodie and reality slowly settles back in. She remembers to breathe like Mama taught her, focusing on the physical action of it until she can think again.

Her parents are still gone and she feels a growing certainty that her time to be a child has gone with them. But for now, she tells herself, she is safe.

Still, the impenetrable shadows of the room invite every manner of monsters into her head and though she tries as hard as she can, she can neither fall back asleep nor stop the flood of panic she feels at every small sound.

As quietly as she can, she feels her way out of the room, wincing at the swoosh of the door opening that seems decibels louder amid the silence of the night. She gratefully drinks in the light in the corridor outside, its floor to ceiling metal and stark man-made lines so reassuringly different from the jagged stone of the cave.

Sitting down on the cool floor, she tries to close her eyes and rest, taking comfort in how the light filters through her eyelids in a burst of orange. She’s only slept outside of a bed once before, on one of the ships on the journey from Coruscant to Lah’mu, and then she was lying on Papa’s coat and resting her head in Mama’s lap. She frowns, stretching her now sore neck, and wonders whether everything will remind her of her parents for the rest of her life and whether it will always ache as much as it does now.

The door next to her swooshes open again and Jyn flinches. She relaxes a bit though when Cassian comes through.

He takes her in on the floor and then gestures with his head for her to follow him down the corridor. ‘Do you like hot chocolate?’

She nods and follows and thinks that she probably would have followed him even if he’d been offering her nutrient paste.

They arrive at a small kitchen area and Cassian immediately gathers his ingredients and puts them in a pot, looking like he’s well used to cooking for himself. It’s only when he has to grab a stool to stand on so that he can stir that she realizes how young he must really be.

Jyn finds a big, padded seat and watches him as he finds cups and carefully fills them. The hum of the refrigerator keeps silence at bay and the little room feels like an island in a deep and dangerous ocean.

The hot chocolate is not as sweet as her Papa used to make, but it’s still good and it warms her heart a little more with each sip. As she sinks further into the padding of her chair, she wishes that they could spend the whole night here and never have to go back to the awful dark. She watches Cassian for signs that he wants to leave but he never gives any. He just sits with her in a kind and gentle quiet, even after he’s finished his drink. Jyn is halfway to crying with gratitude at not being forced to find words she doesn’t have.

She doesn’t realise she was drifting off before she’s woken up by someone banging the refrigerator door shut.

‘ _Liora!_ ’ Cassian whispers, putting his finger to his lips.

The woman jumps and curses before coming over to ruffle Cassian’s hair. ‘Sorry, bud.’ The resemblance between the two of them is striking and Jyn wonders whether they’re related somehow. Liora tilts her head at Jyn. ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is Jyn. She just arrived today and she’s having trouble sleeping in the dark.’

Jyn startles a little because she never told him that.

Cassian must catch her reaction. ‘I just figured the only reason you’d be trying to sleep in a corridor instead of your bed was the light.’

Liora rests an approving hand on his shoulder. ‘He’s very observant, this one.’ She and Cassian share an impenetrable look. ‘Well, she shouldn’t sleep here. _Some_ people would like their kitchens to stay kitchens so they can slam the fridge door when they like.’ Her gaze falls back to Jyn. ‘I’m on night shifts for the rest of the week so if you make sure you’re out of my bunk before 0830 then you can use my room until then.’

Relief floods through Jyn and she smiles and whispers, ‘Thank you.’

Liora nods and goes back to making herself a cup of caf. ‘Just for this week, mind. At some point you’ve gotta toughen up if you’re ever going to make it here.’

Thinking of the hot rage that’s been simmering all this time beneath the heavy cloud of her grief, Jyn says, ‘I will. I want to learn to fight them.’

‘Good girl. Hold on to that anger, Jyn. Sometimes it’ll be the only thing that keeps you warm.’ With that she heads for the door. ‘Cassian, you remember the code for my door, yeah?’

‘If I didn’t, I’d just break in.’

Liora’s smile is deeply fond. ‘Atta boy. Good night, you two. Hope you can get some sleep, Jyn.’

Once she’s left, Cassian collects and washes their cups. ‘Do you want to go now?’

Jyn lets a huge, involuntary yawn answer for her.

As they walk, Jyn thinks about Liora and Cassian’s similar faces. She asks, ‘Was that your mother?’

He gravely shakes his head and Jyn knows for certain that his mama is just as lost as hers. ‘No, but when we’re on missions we always pretend she is because we look alike. We both came from the Festian Resistance together.’

She wonders what he means by ‘missions’ and the ‘resistance’. Is he already a soldier, even when he’s still a kid like her? She asks, ‘When did you start fighting?’, and thinks her heart might break (even more than it’s already broken) when she hears the answer.

‘I was six.’ His voice is low and sad.

Jyn can’t help but picture him, even smaller than she is now, his toy tooka named ‘Cat’ replaced with a weapon. ‘I’m sorry’, she says but it doesn’t feel like enough. She lets her hand brush up against his.

He takes the invitation and her hand and they stay like that until he has to enter the code for the door to Liora’s room.

Jyn steps in first, heading straight for the bunk that takes up a majority of the space. Cassian fiddles with the light settings until they’re dim enough for sleep but she can still see the outlines of everything in the room.

He hangs back near the door, watching her. ‘Will you be okay here?’

She should say yes and let him go back to his own bed and the sleep that she rudely interrupted. But he’s the closest thing Jyn has in the galaxy to a friend and the past few days have made her sick and tired of watching people leave. She meets his eyes. ‘Could you stay?’

He doesn’t hesitate, just climbs onto the opposite end of the bunk and stretches out.

Jyn lies down, making sure not to curl her legs up like she normally does so that Cassian has enough room. After everything, the mattress feels like the most comfortable thing in the world and Cassian’s quiet breathing makes her feel safe enough to close her eyes.

The last thing she hears is Cassian whispering, ‘It’ll get easier, Jyn. I promise.’

Years later, as she tries to parse her newly realized feelings for Cassian and figure out just how long it’s been since she fell in love with him, she’ll always come back to the glowing in her chest as she fell asleep that night. It was a mere flicker of light amidst the black of her sorrow and anger but it would keep burning until eventually she’d find her whole heart aflame.


End file.
